On June 9th Google Books Software Engineers blogged about a new feature for Google Books - Doodle. Doodle will allow uses (using supported browsers - like Chrome), to begin doodling in the book using the book's Doodle Mode - which gives you access to a virtual color changing crayon. The nice thing here is that this kind of annotation is another interactive feature that allows users to interact with their book, the downside is that it isn't saved - so if you want to keep your notation or artwork you have to do a screen shot. What this does though is open a whole new set of books for digital interaction; puzzle books, connect the dots, mazes, etc. although only for web reading now, we should expect that after a while that all ebook readers should have this level of intractability.
Highlighting can be a very effective tool in reading and learning no matter the kind of text being read: from novels to textbooks. Most textbooks or other forms of information text will usually used text features along with graphics to help organize information presented in the text. These elements are done to help focus attention on important or key concepts and provide additional information. The text organization itself can include structural elements such as heading, subheading, index, glossary, paragraph spacing, bulleted or numbered lists, sidebars or side boxes, italics, underlines or bold for words or even sections. Graphic content can include the use of symbols, colors, illustrations, pictures, diagrams, charts, and graphs. Poor highlighting design - too much text has been highlighted. The act of highlighting is less time consuming and much easier than note-taking ( to be discussed in an upcoming posting). To be effective in highlighting it should be a kind of meta
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